Baobabs on the bucket list

Baobabs are remarkable trees, and TPP wants to see these badly, so they are on his plant bucket list. Note that the dopey photographer has the lizard in focus not the trees, rather a typical sort of plant near sightedness. But these trees are in Madagascar, not an easy place to visit. The Phactors have seen some different baobabs in South Africa and the baobab like bottle trees of Queensland. But these bottle tree baobabs are just the coolest trees. It's hard to believe these aren't a made up scifi alien tree. These and the ones in S. Africa are species of Adansonia and while a species does occur in Australia the bottle tree there is a species of Brachychiton. The general term for trees that grow like this is pachycauly, thick stems. For many years TPP had a fig that grew as a pachycaul and it was pruned to look like one of thesebaobabs. It was a pretty cool bonsai tree, just like this one from Dave's Garden. But still not quite the same.

Phactor Phollowers

About Me

When not otherwise occupied, this author works as an academic botanist, a purveyor of plant diversity, taxonomy, economic botany, and rain forest ecology. The opinions expressed in this blog represent only my own and are in no way connected to the policies of my employer or state whoever they may be. No public resources were used to create this blog although many more foolish things have been done with public monies. Queries, questions, can be emailed to: phytophactor at googlemail (which is abbreviated to gmail) dot com.